


Scars

by SinisterAmix



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Have Decided Not to Tag For Now, M/M, Tags May Spoil a Story, There's Nothing Explicit But Read at Your Own Risk I Guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 12:30:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17365862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinisterAmix/pseuds/SinisterAmix
Summary: When he’d entered the scene, you’d dismissed him as nothing special. Then he came barging back in just to spite you, to make you focus on him and only him. And he’d succeeded intoomany ways.





	Scars

                When the way you feel becomes clear, you nearly have a panic attack.

                It began with disappointment. You had expected more, and you stalked away with something disgusting clawing at your stomach, making you sick. Despite yourself, you had hoped for something fresh. It was too good to be true. …But a season later, it _was_ true, and you were beaten at your own game. It was no longer “too good”, but “good enough”. There was _finally_ someone good enough, the electric light you’d once believed had burnt out long ago reignited by the sparks swirling around an inferno you’d somehow been too blind to see. When he’d entered the scene, you’d dismissed him as nothing special. Then he came barging back in just to spite you, to make you focus on him and only him. And he’d succeeded in _too_ many ways.

                He’s Kagami Taiga, your rival.

                After he and your ex-best friend beat you, beat _Akashi_ and staked their claim on the Winter Cup, you wanted nothing more than to play him again. You itched for a one-on-one every day since, and only when Satsuki had figured you out did she force you to call him out to the court again for something casual. She joined you of course, faithful to the bond the pair of you have had since you were too young to understand it. And with Kagami came Tetsu, glued to his side like he always seemed to be these days.

                It irked you, but you never understood why.

                Or maybe you didn’t want to.

                It was your third one-on-one, and you destroyed him. He demanded a rematch, and you smirked, saying you’d humor him.

                Days, then weeks, and your matches quickly became a regular thing. Tetsu and Satsuki dutifully watched, calmly placated the both of you when you got too hotheaded to speak like human beings. As Satsuki smacked your arm and reprimanded you with a cute pout, Tetsu jabbed your rival in the side, effectively dousing the embers of rage burning in the redness of his face. And just like that, Kagami was pacified. They’ve always worked well with each other.

                This reflection reared its ugly head—a red flag. You ignored it.

                Soon enough, it wasn’t just basketball that brought you together. It was also food. You ate together, at least kind of, because that quickly turned into a competition too—a competition that bastard vexingly won. The guy was a black hole, and he put your own ridiculous appetite to shame. You watched him scarf down mountains of burgers and felt a grudging respect continue to build in your bosom. But as it turned out, he didn’t just eat like a king, but cooked fit for a king as well. You hated that.

                You hated that you loved it—every single thing he made that you were lucky enough to taste. It was like he handled every dish with god’s hands, as ridiculous as that sounded. But how else could you describe a flavor that made you feel like you had died and went to heaven with every bite? You thought that if his skill with a ball equated to his skill with a kitchen knife, he’d beat you on the court with ease.

                Good thing it didn’t. At that point, he wouldn’t be real. He was enough of a challenge as it was. Definitely good enough.

                One day, Satsuki looked at you with a gaze you couldn’t read as you fondly described how Kagami tripped over nothing that morning after your one-on-one. She pulled on the hands entwined between you and brought them to soft pink lips to kiss your knuckles. She’d done it a thousand times by then, and the affectionate gesture nearly went unnoticed by you because this time you were too busy laughing and reminiscing about your time spent with someone else. You were too busy thinking about scarlet hair and crimson eyes.

                When you finally looked at her, she smiled back and said nothing.

                She’s Momoi Satsuki, your soulmate.

                It’s a phenomenon no one quite understands, but proof of it is ironed into your skin—in the scars you both share, as well as in the intensity of what you feel.

                Satsuki has been your soulmate for as long as you can remember. You were children when her parents explained it to you. You’d skinned your knee pretty badly while playing streetball, and a little more than a week later, that big brown scab was now a big fresh scar. And Satsuki, always the smarter of the two of you, the quicker to have everything click, flicked your forehead when you met up that next morning to walk to school together. She glared and pointed at her own knee, at a familiar big fresh scar.

                “This is your fault,” she said. Rather than apologize, you laughed and replied, “Expect more.”

                A year later, you realized you liked her. You _like_ liked her. So you kissed her by the jungle gym, after making absolutely sure none of the other kids were looking. She giggled and you blushed, embarrassed because you knew you didn’t like girls yet, but Satsuki had always been the exception. She told you to stop being embarrassed, because she could feel it and it made her embarrassed too. Your parents once explained to you that soulmates could also share emotions, depending on their intensity. You guessed that’s what Satsuki meant. Then she said she _like_ liked you back, and while flustered, you grabbed her wrist and rubbed your thumb over a scar she got from falling off her bike two months ago because you had no idea what else to do. That night, you gazed at a similar one on your own wrist, feeling comforted, and kissed it goodnight.

                Years passed with you attached at the hip. Your parents were proud, and so were you. They said most people didn’t meet their soulmates for many, many years, until they were well into their adulthood. Some never meet them at all. It’s sad, you think, to never meet the one person everyone says you can’t be whole without. And apparently some people don’t care. They either give up on meeting their soulmate or don’t go looking and end up with someone that doesn’t share their scars or that weird empathic link. You thought about this once while Satsuki laid on her stomach between your legs, cheek nestled in the dip of your chest. She flipped the page of the novel she was reading with a polished thumbnail as your eyes traced the tendrils of her pink hair spilling over her shoulders. You couldn’t imagine never meeting her.

                As naïve as you were at thirteen, you knew you loved her. You loved her like you loved basketball, and you knew that was a lot. You were pretty confident she loved you too.

                A year later, you fucked up. You weighed the two things you loved the most and abandoned both in favor of drowning in your quickly rising depression. The color had been drained from the world around you and you couldn’t find it in yourself to care anymore, so you dismissed everything as trivial—even her.

                Sometimes you wonder how deep a scar must run for you to not see it, to not share it. But even after all that shit you gave her, she forgave you. Of course, she did. She loved you more than anything, despite the scars you couldn’t see.

                But after that, it was different. You could feel it.

                Regardless, you were the power couple of Teikou. And now, you’re the power couple of Touou. Things have never been quite the same between you though. On the surface, it seems as if they are, and no one suspects a thing. It’s a shame, because puberty has been generous with the both of you. You’re tall, strong, and handsome, and she’s easily the most beautiful girl you know—exactly your type to boot. Yet you brush her off, and she gets annoyed easily. You fight, sometimes over nothing. You growl and she hisses until you aren’t speaking for days. Then you seek each other out and smooth it over, breaking and fixing and rotating like clockwork. Even while turbulent, your relationship is perfect. You kiss and cuddle and hold hands. You make her laugh when she cries, and she guides you when you feel you’re losing yourself. She picks you up at all the right moments and you say what she needs to hear in all the right places. Even at your worst, you’re always able to succeed together.

                But it’s different than it was when you were kids. It evinces in the smiles that don’t quite reach her eyes, amalgamates in the strain behind your own.

                And now that you’ve met Kagami, what you thought you knew is no longer your reality.

                You discovered perfection isn’t what you want.

                Because when Kagami grins at you, your chest tightens and flutters and swells all at once. Because Satsuki looks at you with that unreadable expression and you’re worried she sees right through you. Because today, you happen to notice a scar on the redhead’s shoulder and recall a similar one you saw earlier that morning ingrained in familiar pale skin, reminded of the collection that isn’t unique to your own body, something ugly and heavy pooling in your gut.

                And just like that, you realize Kagami Taiga the rival has become Kagami Taiga the untouchable.

                As your eyes pierce into each other on the court, you see what he is: infuriating and unpredictable and _imperfect_. To your horror, you see everything you want and more and it’s devastating.

                In the back of your mind, you can hear something tear. Deep in your chest, you can feel something crack.

                He’s everything you can’t have because you both belong to someone else. And fate’s cruel punchline is that you’ve fallen _in_ love for the very first time, and it’s not with the person it should be.

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly just wanted to post this somewhere because I really like the way I wrote it. It's short af, but if you enjoyed it, leave a comment and I may add more. /winkwonk


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